[Riding] Roman Restarts

mood: tired

music: 鷺巣詩郎 - はじめての恋

I didn't get to post last week due to my beloved laptop dying. :( So I'll try to post a quick summary of it and of this week.

Last week was one of the more frustrating I've had with Roman. I could not get him to trot at /all/; he was determined to just make me fight him every step of the way. By the last twenty minutes, I was feeling more disheartened than I had in a long time. But then we moved to an obstacle course.

It was a long one... over a trotting pole, weave through a bunch of traffic cones, over two legs of a square made from trotting poles, to the wall, around the corner, over the other two legs of the square, down a little 'chute,' turn around, over a trotting pole, over a small jump, turn around, and go past two jump poles... picking up an empty cat dish from one and placing it on the other. Roman was very pleased to do this, and we did the obstacle course almost flawlessly. Which, I think, was really the only thing that kept me from being immensely disheartened by the lesson.

This week, Kara was away at a show along with her horse; Jan, who teaches the class after ours, was teaching us. She's quite a character, but is very very focused on the basics. She made Elizabeth (classmate-Elizabeth, obviously) and I try more or less starting over. No obstacle courses, nothing, just purely focus on posture and balance and position. Even a lot of walking while we did this.

On the upside, we walked so long that Roman was bored enough to trot without complaint just for the change in pace! And I do feel like my posture is greatly improved; we've almost never really taken an /entire/ class just to work on it, and I think we both benefited from it. Alas, I will be missing next week since I have to go to Baltimore; I will be sad, but week after next I return.

This week, however, my aunt was in town; my grandmother's house was finally sold, and so she's moved back out here. She's staying with my folks until she finds her own place. She was an avid rider in her youth, and so she came to the stables and met all the horses, and hung around while I groomed, and met all the stable dogs, and befriended Cleo and helped me feed horses and suchnot afterwards. That was fun, having someone else in the family who came to enjoy the horses, and she hopes to visit the stables more and perhaps start up riding herself again.